My four-year-old daughter refused to have her hair cut, and after one sentence her grandmother’s smile disappeared from her face

That morning, in the hair salon, my four-year-old daughter jumped up from the chair and began screaming as if Clara threatened not her hair with scissors, but her life.

“Don’t cut it!” Olivia clutched the curls hanging down to her waist with both hands. “When Dad comes, he won’t recognize me!”

The hair dryer in the salon immediately fell silent. The clock hanging on the wall rang only once, but that one sound continued in my head for a long time. Clara held small, silver scissors in her hand, and one brown curl of Olivia’s hung on its tip.

“Nino, perhaps we shouldn’t continue today,” Clara told me quietly.

I approached my daughter and pressed her favorite rabbit, a small yellow cloth toy, to her chest.

“Sweetheart, we’ll only shorten the ends of your hair. Nothing will change.”

“Everything will change!” Olivia began to cry. “He won’t be able to find me anymore!”

At that time I still thought it was a childish fear. For the last two years I had been trying to explain her father’s death to her simply. Daniel died in an accident when Olivia was only one year old. At the funeral she was held in my arms, but, of course, she could not remember anything. Her only memories were the stories I told and old photographs kept in the closet.

I picked Olivia up, left the salon, and put her in the car. The warm leather of the seat clung to my skin, but my hands were still freezing.

“Why will Dad come?” I asked on the way.

Olivia watched me from the back seat.

“He comes sometimes.”

“Where does he come?”

“To my room. When you are sleeping.”

She said it as if she were telling me an ordinary story. My hands tightened around the steering wheel.

“What does he do?”

“He talks to me. Once he sewed my rabbit too. You remember that its ear was torn?”

I looked at the rabbit on the back seat. Its left ear really had a new, rough stitch. I had not sewn it.

When we arrived home, Olivia ran straight to her room. The sound of the old refrigerator could be heard in the kitchen, while rain fell in thin lines by the window. I picked up the phone and called my mother, Marina.

“Mom, Olivia told me that Daniel comes to her.”

Silence fell on the other side for several seconds.

“Children have imagination,” she replied.

“She knows about the rabbit’s ear. I didn’t sew it.”

“Perhaps she tore it herself and you don’t remember.”

“Mom, Daniel is dead.”

“I know, Nino. I know better than you.”

Such severity appeared in her voice that I felt cold on my neck.

That evening I sat down on the bed beside Olivia. The smell of lavender soap stood in the room, and her curly hair was spread across the pillow like roots.

“Tell me the truth, did Dad really visit you?”

She lowered her head.

“Grandma told me not to tell you.”

“Why?”

Olivia squeezed her favorite rabbit.

“Grandma said that Dad is very afraid. If you find out that he is alive, bad people will find him.”

My breath caught.

“He is alive?”

Olivia looked into my eyes.

“Dad did not die, Mom. He just lives far away.”

With these words, the door handle slowly went down. I jumped up. The door opened, and my mother stood on the threshold, holding the brownish leather folder I had seen in her closet for years. Her face lost its color when Olivia quietly said:

“Grandma, Mom already knows…”

Marina put the folder on the table and reached for the first lock…

Marina’s fingers stopped on the lock. In the room there was only the sound of rain and the rubbing of the rabbit’s cloth ear, which the child was nervously moving.

“What does she know?” my mother asked.

“That Dad is alive,” I answered.

Marina first looked at Olivia, then at me. Her face was so tense, as if for years she had carried a heavy sack on her back and now, for the first time, could not understand where to put it.

“The child misunderstood.”

“Then explain it to me.”

“Not now.”

“Precisely now.”

I went toward the folder, but Marina grabbed my hand. Her fingers were cold.

“Nino, please. If you open this, you will not be able to go back.”

“I lost going back six years ago, when I stood beside Daniel’s empty coffin.”

Olivia raised her head.

“The coffin was empty?”

My mother immediately turned toward her.

“Go to the room, sweetheart.”

“No,” I said. “Stay.”

Panic flashed in Marina’s eyes. For the first time I saw her not as the strong woman who solved all my problems, but as a person who could no longer manage to hide something.

I opened the folder’s lock. Inside were insurance papers, hospital certificates, a small article cut out of a newspaper, and a white sheet of paper on which one address was written. Under it a time was indicated: Friday, seven in the evening.

“What is this?” I asked.

Marina lowered her eyes.

“The address where you must go.”

“To whom?”

“To Daniel.”

The room seemed to tilt around me. I leaned on a chair because I no longer had strength in my knees.

“You knew?”

“I knew that he was alive.”

“For six years?”

“At first everything was supposed to be temporary.”

“Temporary? Every day I went to his grave, which did not even exist!”

Olivia began to cry. I ran toward her, but Marina whispered to me:

“Daniel was being threatened. Money was stolen at the company. He said that if he disappeared, you and the child would survive.”

“And me? What was I doing during these six years?”

“You were alive.”

“No, Mom. I was breathing without him. That is something else.”

I did not wait until Friday. The next morning, at eight o’clock, I went to the city’s old bus station. The air there smelled of diesel and burnt coffee. In my pocket I had the address taken from Marina, while Olivia stood beside me and pressed the rabbit to her chest.

“Will Dad really be there?” she asked me.

“I don’t know.”

“Are you afraid?”

“Very.”

“Me too. But I want to see him.”

The address belonged to a small house on the edge of the city, behind an old greenhouse. We found the door locked. Dust sat on the window, and in the yard a rusty swing moved slowly in the wind.

Suddenly I heard a man’s voice from behind.

“Nino, you should not have come here.”

I turned around.

He was tall, thin, and familiar. His hair was shorter, a thin scar was visible near his right eyebrow, but his eyes were still the same.

Daniel.

Olivia jumped in front of me.

“Dad!”

Daniel took one step forward, but stopped, as if he were even asking permission to approach his own child.

“Olivia,” he pronounced.

“You did not die.”

His lips moved, although he made no sound.

I went to him and looked him in the face.

“Why did you leave me?”

“Because I had no other way.”

“For six years you did not have even one phone call?”

“I called you.”

“Where?”

Daniel shifted his gaze to Marina’s folder.

“Your mother does not tell you everything.”

“Then you tell me.”

He took a small memory card from the inside pocket of his jacket and placed it in my hand.

“This is the reason why you had to think I was dead.”

“What is on it?”

Daniel looked at Olivia and his face changed.

“The truth that will also put your life in danger.”

At that very moment, the sound of a car engine came from far away. Daniel quickly looked toward the road, then whispered to me:

“If that man gets out of the car, you must return the card to me immediately. Do not open it until I tell you…”

A black car appeared on the road. Its tires cut through the wet gravel as if someone wanted to take away our chance to escape. Daniel lifted Olivia into his arms and led us behind the house, into the old greenhouse.

“Who are they?” I asked.

“Those from whom I have been hiding for six years.”

“You said I must not open this card.”

“Because everything you cannot yet endure is there.”

The air in the greenhouse was damp. Dried tomatoes hanging under the broken glass swayed silently. The car doors opened. We heard two men’s voices.

“Daniel! We know you are here!”

Olivia pressed herself against Daniel.

“Dad, will they come again?”

“They will never touch you again,” he told her, but he was not certain in his own voice.

Marina came to us too. Her face bore the kind of exhaustion that only years of lies can leave.

“It is time for you to know everything,” she told me.

We moved to the neighboring village, to the house of a lawyer named Irakli. It was noon. An old wooden lamp stood on the table, and beside it were a computer and a small screen. Irakli locked the door.

“Let’s open the card here,” he said.

I turned toward Daniel.

“Before I see it, I want you to tell me one thing. On the day they told me about your death, did an accident really happen?”

Daniel lowered his head.

“There was an accident, but I did not die.”

“Then who died?”

“My colleague, Levan. They found my documents in the car. Marina and I decided that this was a chance.”

“You decided that I had to live as a widow?”

“I decided that you had to live.”

Irakli put the memory card into the computer. Daniel’s old office appeared on the screen. In the frame he sat at a desk, and the company’s financial director, Vakhtang, stood in front of him. The voice was heard clearly.

“The money disappeared from the accounts,” Daniel was saying. “This is already theft.”

Vakhtang chuckled.

“It is only money. But if you go to the police, your wife and child will not wake up.”

Something collapsed in my chest. Daniel struck the table with his hand.

“If you touch them, I will destroy everything.”

In the next shot Marina appeared. She stood in the same office and was telling Vakhtang:

“You must not let Nino know anything. If she finds out, she will come here herself.”

The video stopped.

I looked at my mother.

“Were you involved too?”

“I only wanted to protect you.”

“You hid my life from me.”

“Daniel wrote to you every day. I received the letters.”

“Where are they?”

Marina took a bundle of folded letters from her bag. My name was written on each envelope, but I had seen none of them.

Daniel said quietly:

“I did not want it to happen this way.”

“But it happened.”

Olivia came to me and took my hand.

“Mom, will Dad stay with us now?”

I could not answer. At that moment Irakli’s phone rang. He looked at the screen and lost color.

“They are from the police,” he said. “Vakhtang got to them earlier and reported that Daniel stole the company’s money and kidnapped the child.”

“What?”

“They already have a warrant.”

The sound of a siren came from outside the window. Daniel stood up.

“I have to run again.”

“No,” I said. “This time you will not disappear alone.”

Irakli quickly took out another folder.

“There is a way, but for it we must do the thing that will make Vakhtang lose everything.”

“What way?”

Irakli opened the folder, but did not have time to say the answer. A new message arrived on the phone. He read it, then looked directly at Daniel.

“They found Olivia’s kindergarten teacher. And they say that the child already knows where her father is hiding…”